Think tank proposes an ebook reader for every American student
A Washington think tank has released a paper saying that every student should be supplied with an e-Textbook reader of some type to cut costs and allow for constantly updated texts.
The New Democratic Leadership Council, a Washington think tank formed in 1985 as a possible alternative to the traditional Democratic party, has issued a paper that probably made Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos giddy with joy. According to “A Kindle In Every Backpack” [PDF link], Thomas Z. Freedman, the author of the paper, feels that a Kindle or similar ebook reader, should be purchased for each of the 56 million K-12 schoolchildren in America.
Mr. Freedman estimates that upfront costs would currently be $200 per device with a drop to $80 per unit by 2012. The government currently spends $109 per student for traditional printed textbooks. There is no mention in the paper as to who should pick up the cost of the ebook readers, although one assumes it would be the government.
The benefits to this plan are many according to the report and include things such as the ability to update textbooks rapidly, lessening the load of weight carried by students, quizzes & tests being conducted directly on the device and more. Oddly absent from the report is any mention of the potential environmental impact from the reduction in paper usage, but one would have to believe it would be of significant impact.
One of the problems with this plan is that while the paper mentions the Kindle by name numerous times, and also suggests the poss ability of some other brand, I personally feel a whole new reader would have to be designed just for screen strength. The Seattle Times reported just yesterday that a class action suit has been filed against Amazon, the company behind the Kindle, in excess of $5 million dollars due to cracking face plates and screens. Considering the way school children treat their current textbooks, one could easily imagine a fresh supply of Kindles having to arrive at schools on a daily basis.
The move to eTextbooks seems inevitable, and is more of a question of “when” more than “if”. For now the technology seems to not to be in a state that could handle the day-to-day abuse students would heap upon it, and the cost is still prohibitive. This isn’t to say that a test shouldn’t be conducted in the real world environment of a school, but the results are probably going to be a lot of broken readers.
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July 15th, 2009
No mention of operating costs like maintenance, battery replacement, etc. No mention of estimated lifespan and number of eReaders (and the cost) a student will go through during the course of their years in school. No mention of real usability differences between the printed page & an eReader. Costs of Kindle titles have yet to fall but for some reason e-versions of text books are expected to have a plummeting price. No mention of competing tech like, say, providing netbooks in place of eReaders. I could go on, but why bother?
The report is remarkably shortsighted in addition to having other major flaws. Unless it was written by someone who stands to profit from the sale of the readers. Then it makes perfect sense.
July 16th, 2009
Ha ha – very funny and blatantly stupid. eBook readers would not save money because book publishers will still charge for updates like they do now, in fact students will be DRM’d into not being able to sell on old copies to other students.
eTextbooks are not inevitable until they are free and open source and written in HTML so students can use Zotero to manage references. Maybe the Crunchpad can solve this.
Batteries and LCD production is likely to damage the environment more than wood pulp from forests that are grown for that purpose.
Sadly nothing in your article makes sense.